Education: what do we want?

Right now there are three types of schools widely available: public schools, madressahs and the mushrooming fee-based private schools. Of the three the madressahs, often with some justification, have been vilified for infusing young minds with extremist ideas. But madressahs are at least able to provide children with three hot meals a day and a bed to sleep in while public schools often conduct their classes outside because they lack shelter. The phenomenon of ‘ghost’ schools and teachers underscores the corruption pervading government-funded schools. And then we have to ask ourselves if the quality of education on offer at public and private schools is any less ideologised than that at madressahs.
Ever since the passage of the 18th Amendment devolved education to the provinces we have been left without a standardised syllabus. As the controversies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have shown, this allows the religious right to further degrade an already flawed system. Leaving education to the provinces has also meant that it is they who now should be responsible for the lion’s share of funding but often prefer spending on development, which brings more immediate political benefit. But questions of funding aside, we need to decide what we want when we educate our children. Do we hope for them to develop inquiring, critical minds or to endlessly regurgitate what they have been spoon-fed by their instructors? Right now our education system is geared towards the latter. Changing that culture does not require more money; it needs only political will, which has been lacking so far.
Ali Hassan
Karachi